National Oilwell Varco (NOV) announced entering into a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Aramco to form a joint venture in Saudi Arabia. Through its state-of the art manufacturing and fabrication facilities and NOV’s market-leading drilling technologies, the joint venture will manufacture high-specification land rigs, rig and drilling equipment, and offer certain aftermarket services...

Keppel Offshore & Marine (Keppel O&M) through its subsidiary in Azerbaijan, Caspian Shipyard Company (CSC), is on track to deliver a semisubmersible drilling rig to Caspian Drilling Company, a subsidiary of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR)...

Game-changing technologies often take years to incubate. In the case of Noble Drilling’s new electrically operated blowout preventer (eBOP), the journey from idea to reality has taken more than a decade, but the company believes the industry is now ripe for this kind of disruptive technology...

Increasing use of water due to longer laterals and higher stage counts are also driving demand for more cost-effective water management solutions By Kelli Ainsworth, Associate Editor As operators push the number of stages per well to upwards of 75 or even 100 in some plays, they’re also demanding step-changes in the efficiency of hydraulic fracturing technologies and equipment, including associated technologies like water management systems. A significant area of focus has been on reducing plug mill-out time, with more dissolvable technologies coming to the market, as well as the development of shorter plugs with less material to mill through. Technologies are also emerging to automate the surface operations of hydraulic fracturing. While the industry has made significant progress in ...

Drilling standardization, collaboration and automation have become major buzzwords in the industry in recent years, promising higher reliability, improved safety, increased efficiency and decreased costs. Due to the complexity associated with the automation of rig floor equipment, however, full automation of processes and equipment will not be possible until there is a higher level of collaboration and standardization...

To improve the reliability process across its well engineering and construction activities, Petrobras implemented a new structure last year that approaches reliability from a top-down perspective, rather than from the bottom up...

Noble Corporation and GE have jointly announced a partnership to collaborate on an advanced data analytics system for offshore drilling rigs known as the Digital Rig solution. The Digital Rig solution aims to significantly improve the operational productivity of Noble's drilling rigs...

By Kelli Ainsworth, Associate Editor In a cyclical industry like oil and gas, downturns are an unfortunate reality. When downturns hit, the industry always works to cut costs, but they inevitably rise again in the next upturn. However, this cycle may prove different, Jørn Madsen, CEO of Maersk Drilling, said in the plenary session at the 2017 SPE/IADC Drilling Conference in The Hague, The Netherlands, on 15 March. “I think we’re facing a new reality,” he said. “We will not just be competing against each other. We will be competing against other energy forms like solar and wind, and that means that the oil industry, if we don’t change, will lose and lose fast.” Increased collaboration and automation could help ...

The drilling industry has long been labeled as being slow to embrace new technologies and innovation. However, that may not be an accurate characterization of the industry, Ekaterina Minyaeva, Drilling Automation, Subsurface and Wells Consultant at OTM Consulting, said in a presentation at the 2017 SPE DSATS/IADC ART symposium on 13 March in The Hague, The Netherlands...